Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Customers - Green Bottle Thursday (1996, Vapor)

Perhaps had The Customers released Green Bottle Thursday a few years deeper into the advent of the World Wide Web, I might have more to offer on them, but I'm afraid the music alone will have to suffice, search engines be damned. So as far as I can tell this quartet called Los Angeles home, but they didn't bare much Southern Cali chic, as it were, which was perfectly fine with me. In "Shipwreck" they proclaim to have "no time for the Rolling Stones," yet leadman Ryan Sexton and axe-wrangler Sloke possess a smoldering swagger not terribly removed from Keith Richards. Actually the Stones-y maneuvers laid out by Bash and Pop (Tommy Stinson's post Replacements meal ticket) a couple years earlier would be a better approximation of what the Customers were approaching. I'm also picking up glimmers of Dillon Fence herewhich is more likely than not a pure coincidence. Green Bottle... is probably the most straight-up rock and roll album I've presented in awhile, but I like it, like it...

Wait a sec, I have a record by the Leonards. Is it the one with the black cover? I think I remember another Leonards CD that came out in the mid-90s as well. It's all comiong back to me now. Thanks for the reference.

The Customers were from Minneapolis, I think - formed with a couple of guys from The Leonards and signed to Vapor Reords in 95 or so. They were a great live band, and I always thought they were trying to pick up the baton dropped by the Replacements (i.e. "I'm in love with the girl that works at the store but I ain't nothing but a Customer"), so the Bash & Pop reference is spot on. Da,m good record.